Illinois: ‘Fingerprints for FOID Cards’ Fails To Pass

Residents of the Land of Lincoln will not have to submit fingerprints and pay upwards of $150 in order to own, shoot or even touch firearms after all. House Democrats voted to pass the measure last week. However, sensing the outrage of gun owners, the Illinois Senate’s Democrat leadership killed the bill and closed out their spring session without acting on the bill.

On May 30th, we wrote of how the House passed Democrat Representative Kathleen Willis’ bill to require fingerprints and 400% fee increases to obtain a Firearms Owners’ ID card. Willis’ work of art tyranny would have also eliminated private firearm transfers and set a cap on the fee dealers could charge for performing transfers on private sales at $10 – an amount that dealers said didn’t merit their time and trouble.

Under the byzantine legislative rules in Illinois, the bill now requires a 3/5ths majority to pass rather than a simple majority. And the General Assembly stands in recess until October.

Illinois residents won’t have to submit fingerprints to the state to get a gun license after the Senate closed out an overtime session without taking up the bill.

The House passed an amendment to Senate Bill 1966 that would have raised fees to get a Firearm Owner Identification card and require applicants to submit fingerprints. The Senate did not take up the measure before leaving Sunday.

State Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, supported the bill.

“It’s certainly something that both chambers of the Democratic party are committed to and we’re going to continue to push in the fight for this legislation,” Morgan said.

Sponsors of the measure said the fingerprinting mandate was needed to address loopholes in the system that led to a convicted felon from Mississippi getting a FOID card in Illinois, and buying a gun. That man killed five people at an Aurora warehouse in February even after his FOID card was revoked. State police revoked his FOID card after they discovered his felony conviction, which he had lied about on his initial application.

Loopholes?

The only loopholes that facilitated the Aurora Henry Pratt Company massacre involved the state screwing up by failing to find the killer’s criminal history before issuing him a FOID card.

Then they failed to find it again when they approved the sale of a firearm to him.

When they found the conviction record as part of a background check for a carry license application, they correctly revoked his FOID card. However, nobody from the Illinois State Police or any agency went out to his house to collect his S&W .40 caliber handgun and make an arrest of a felon in possession of a firearm.

No one followed up on the federal felony perjury he committed on his 4473 form either, or the state felony perjury on the application for the carry license.

Despite all this, Prairie State gun control supporters love to talk about mythical “loopholes” as if it was a loophole that allowed this tragedy to happen. Far from it. The state of Illinois failed — repeatedly — to follow it’s own laws and procedures on a slam-dunk gun crime prosecution.

Don’t forget that the Henry Pratt Company aided the killer by posting “NO GUNS” signage ensuring the bad guy would face no meaningful resistance during the shooting rampage until police arrived minutes later.

In the picture below, the name of the Henry Pratt Company, where the mass public shooting on Friday took place, can be seen on the back wall in the picture. The no gun sign can also be clearly seen on the door.
Yet another #MassPublicShooting in another #gunfreezone. pic.twitter.com/yKN5poojVK

That sign on the front door did absolutely nothing to stop a mass murderer from committing his crime. But it did ensure that law-abiding gun owners didn’t bring their guns into that business.

So what happened?

Democrat Representative Kathleen Willis, now a minor leadership figure in the Illinois House Democrat caucus, wheeled and dealed for votes to get her gun control bill passed in the House. Initially, black caucus members had deep-seated reservations about the steep fees and expensive electronic fingerprinting the bill required and withheld their support.

Willis made some promises, though, and secured the support of the black caucus. This proved ironic considering the bill would disproportionately impact inner city poor people of color that make up the caucus’ constituency. Just like the Jim Crow laws and Black Codes passed by racist legislators a hundred years ago to disarm blacks.

In the end, though, a lot of Dems in the Senate didn’t want to take up the bill. A couple of downstaters facing re-election in 2020 didn’t want rile up gun owners in their generally pro-gun districts.

At the same time, several Chicagoland senators refused to support it. They heard from law-abiding leaders of the communities they representand the message came through loud and clear: “We don’t like being treated like criminals in order to own a gun for self-defense.”

In the end, Senate President John Cullerton made sure the bill that nobody wanted to vote upon stayed tied up in committee where it effectively died. If Kathleen Willis couldn’t muster a simple majority now, she won’t get a super-majority this fall.

What’s next?

We believe that politicians from both parties will work over the summer and fall to craft a compromise bill. While nothing’s been written yet, we expect fingerprints will remain a part of the final bill, however they will be made optional. At least for now.

Fees will likely double to at least $20 for a ten-year FOID card. Provisions mandating gun confiscations from those with revoked FOID cards may also find their way into the bill. Or at least verifying that guns purchased in the past by a revoked individual have been transferred to a legal gun owner.

This way, politicians from both parties can claim they have “fixed the FOID card” even though the FOID system didn’t fail the victims at Henry Pratt. It was the government that failed them.

comments

Yes, it is raining in the midwest. Here in the St. Louis, MO area, we are only 3 feet from the level of the 1993 floods. There is water everywhere. I may start building my ark soon. I will take two of every kind of firearm on my ark. Feel free to send me any type of firearm you want to be preserved.

As a SOUTHERN ILLINOIS resident, I am happy it didn’t pass this time. Whatever they come up with next time will be horrible too. Just hoping that we can keep this at bay long enough for me to sell my house and move across the river to Missouri where my rights are honored. I have 4 years and some change left on my CCL and 6 years left on my FOID so I should be fine. I am hearing stories from some of the first people that are renewing their CCL in Illinois that the state is just dragging their feet in an attempt to deny CCL.

Here’s the deal: Yes, I think we would win a court challenge of Gun Dealer Licensing. But as soon as it looks like that might happen, the IL GA would pass another GDL bill, possibly even worse than the one we’ve got (and they have the votes in the House and Senate to do just that) and Ol’ JB Pritzker would sign it in a heartbeat.

And then our suit gets mooted.

And if we don’t win these cases, we don’t get reimbursed the $50-100k needed to pay the lawyers.

None of this silliness applies in TX, but I am still curious. Does anybody know of a single crime, at any time in the history of the planet, either prevented or solved by fingerprints attached to a FOID application? Can anyone describe a theoretical mechanism by which that could happen? Or is it (as I suspect) overwhelmingly obvious to absolutely anyone that the requirement has zero to do with solving or preventing crime? And if so, has anyone publicly inquired of the nasty bitch just what the requirement is intended to accomplish, other than making it more difficult and expensive to exercise a Constitutional right?

I know you know better, but it seems you’re thinking a bit slow just now and have misunderstood the “not a bug but a feature” concept.

Even the flaming moron who conceived this abomination knows it will accomplish nothing except reducing the number of lawful gun owners, and causing pain to those who remain. Where this…person is from, that sort of thing passes for virtue.

I can’t believe you people in that area are willing to or have to buy a Gun permit. what a CROCK of SHIT. Yes Govt I have guns please come to my house and take them when ever you so desire to. You mihgt as well just give them to the state and save your money on the permits. the Second Amendment states the Right of Gun Ownership shall NOT be INFRINGED and by forcing you to buy a gun license/permit YOU have been INFRINGED. how do you people live in a Mafia controlled state?????? or better yet why do you people keep electing the crooked Politicians that you do ??????

We have been fighting it since it was instituted. We are just now making headway in the courts against it. There are more than one lawsuit that is0 poised to throw out the entire FOID system. I will fight it by moving across the river to Missouri once my step-son graduates High School.

You are correct sir. For years and years, this is how Illinois was governed: Illinois to Chicago “We will let you do what you want, just don’t force it on us” Chicago to Illinois: “Sounds Good” However in the past 30 years that has slowly changed to: Chicago to Illinois “You better damn well do as we say or else!” Which Illinois has responded to Chicago by saying “F*** OFF” https://theillinoisseparation.com/

this is what this state gets for not voting for Rauner…He may have been a RINO to a degree…but he at least had half his foot in Republican waters….my fellow republicans split the vote and gave the Dem’s in the state the power to fill all the committees

….and just how many times are you going to move. These liberal anti-gun freaks spread like a virus, once they kill the host they move on to another state. Just because you’re not infected yet just means you’re next. Places like Washington, Oregon and Colorado used to be very gun friendly until the natives got outnumbered by the newcomers. Places like Arizona and Texas are already turning purple, they’re probably next to fall.

I agree you have to stand and fight. I am going to stand and fight no matter where I am at. However, Missouri offers more than just a good place for the 2nd Amendment. Missouri has much lower taxes than Illinois. Also, Missouri’s values are more in accordance with mine. I am Pro-Life and my state sickens me in their stance on that.

The first rule of the gov’t failure loophole is don’t talk about the gov’t failure loophole. If that one were to get closed, then gov’t might have to do actual work and solve real issues instead of blaming inanimate objects for all of society’s ills.

In a way I wish it hadn’t failed, now it can come back at a later date, I was hoping that it would pass only to be challenged and overturned based on a 4th Amendment violation…no chance of a comeback then…

The only thing I like, but still wouldn’t ever force on someone else, is the fee cap for dealer transfers. $10 isn’t worth the time or trouble? We fill out the 4473 and the dealer runs it through a computer. All taking less than 2 minutes. They act like they are performing an exhausting function and that they deserve a significant fee for doing next to nothing.

Doesn’t Illinois have their own complementary system that they charge the dealers more than $10/check to use? I thought I read that somewhere.

That was the deal here in Colorado when they put in the cap. Yeah, the NICS check is free but the CBI charges for their “service” and it was more than the cap on what the dealer could charge. A lot of FFLs simply stopped doing transfers because the CBI charged twice the cap and so they lost money on each transfer.

In Colorado every gun sold by a licensed dealer has the 4473 submitted to the CBI electronically. The CBI checks it’s records and does the NICS check for the dealer. So there’s no way a dealer can comply with the 4473 requirements from fedgov without going through the CBI, and therefore they must pay the CBI.

What? The legislators listened to the outrage from the people that elected them. Is that some kind of ‘fake news’. You have to put the fear of losing their jobs into the minds of the legislators before they will stop with the gun control laws.

Of course it’s not about safety. It never was. It’s about making gun ownership so miserable and expensive that most of us give it up as not worth the trouble. So the next time the grabbers come for another piece of our RTKBA cake there will be much less opposition.

“State police revoked his FOID card after they discovered his felony conviction, which he had lied about on his initial application…”

lol. You know what is easier than comparing fingerprints? Comparing a name, DOB, and SS number (or state soundex). He didn’t lie about his IDENTITY, he lied about his conviction record. And if you can’t figure out how to match someone’s name, dob and identifying government number to a conviction record, fingerprints are beyond you.

Vote out those people who wish to take your 2nd amendment rights away! Because it starts with just on right then the next then we have no rights! Boom were a socialist country! No thanks, Were Americans so act like Americans not socialists! Lincoln wouldn’t have put up with taking rights away from Americans So why let Your state who freed the slaves become slaves to your own laws!

Wife FOID renewal just came through for 10 more years and mine was done last year so I have 9 more years. We will be long gone from Illinois, most likely to Tennessee before our’s expire again but glad to hear the bill died – for now.

What is Illinois law enforcement doing about illegally owned guns that criminals and gang thugs possess without an FOID? Seems like nothing unless they catch them AFTER they committed a violent act with one.

It is good to know that elderly, disabled, and minorities will not be made instant felons for the inability to afford the excessive fees and/or the inability to take off work and drive to location for finger printing.